Pro-EU militants a danger for Odessa

Last night an explosion happened at one of the illegal checkpoints erected by pro-European military groups around Odessa. The explosion went off at 4 am local time, injuring 7 people. Apparently, one of the hand grenades that the militants had with them was mishandled and went off. The injured have been hospitalized, their life is not in danger. The police is trying to find out who was responsible for the handling of illegal weapons. “A group of detectives and operatives, bomb disposal technicians are investigating details of the blast at the crime scene,” the regional police department said.

The ultra-right militants dispatched by the rebel government to Odessa are blamed for bringing the local population in danger. Chief of the regional police department Petro Lutsyuk has demanded earlier that Odessa authorities should take away armed activists sent from Kiev as the latter destabilize the current situation in the region. “As a large number of people who were left in Kiev without supervision gathered in the city, it was decided to dispatch these formations to the city of Odessa. We do not need this. They came and created an unstable situation,” Lutsyuk said at a session of the regional council that opened on Thursday. In his words, the people “have set up 12 checkpoints in the region with an unclear legal status at which more than 500 people are on duty in shifts.”